Poem of the Day: About Scotland, & C by Ruthven Todd

I was my own ghost that walked among the hills,

Strolling easily among the ruined stones of history;

The student of geography, concerned with fells

And screes than with the subtle mystery

Of action’s causes – the quickly unbalanced rock

Upon the passing victim, the stab in the back.

Why did this burn run that way to the sea,

Digging a cutting ingredient through stone, moss and peat,

And so become ingredient of whisky?

Why was this glen the cause of a defeat,

The silver bullet in the young man’s lung,

The devil’s puppet and hero of a song?

That queen herself was lorded by the weather,

And Knox drew sustenance from poverty,

The sharp east wind, the sickle in the heather.

The reiver was cornered in the sudden sortie

Of armoured men lying hidden in the bracken,

And a royal line was by sea-storm broken.

This way the landscape formed the people,

Controlled their deeds with cairn and gully;

And no pretender or well-favoured noble

Had power like dammed loch or empty valley.

Their history’s origins lie in rock and haze

And the hero seems shorter than his winter days.

This my ghost saw from the deserted keep

And the left paper-mill forgotten in the slums,

This he saw south among the soft-fleshed sheep

And north-west where the Atlantic drums.

Then, since he’d made no claim to be an apostle,

He left, his trophy a neglected fossil.